Get ready to vote for Varlamore’s most exciting bloodsport… are you ready to take on the Colosseum? Step through this grand entrance and find out…
On the cliffs outside of Civitas illa Fortis, there once stood a great temple, dedicated to sustaining Ralos’ power. Those foolish enough to commit crime within the city walls were dragged here, kicking and screaming, to be sacrificed upon the altar.
These days, of course, the Varlamorians have developed more civilised ways to sustain their god. When he took the throne, King Maximus Tullus ordered the destruction of the temple, and replaced it with an even greater monument – the Fortis Colosseum.
To this very day, warriors from all over Varlamore gather in this hallowed arena to battle to the death in search of fame and glory. Each drop of blood spilt is an offering to Ralos – and a treat for the roaring crowd.
Management of the Colosseum is overseen by one of the seven Teoki of Ralos, senior priests appointed by the Teokan himself. The fighters, however, are hand-selected by the Lanistas, elite warriors who’ve proved themselves on the field of battle.
If blood sacrifice and thrilling combat sounds like your sort of thing, you’re in luck – we just happen to have an invitation with your name on it…
Gameplay
The Fortis Colosseum is Old School’s third wave-based minigame, following in the fiery footsteps of the Fight Caves and the Inferno.
Like its predecessors, the Colosseum is a highly repeatable PvM encounter with a high skill ceiling and a steep difficulty curve. The later waves contain some of the toughest enemies Gielinor has to offer – although players who are new to combat can still try their hand at the earlier waves.
There’s a big focus on ‘reactionary combat’ – the kind where you see the enemies spawn in and quickly figure out how to manage them.
Unlike the Fight Caves and the Inferno, the Colosseum invites you to make big decisions between each wave…
Modifiers
The modifiers system ensures that no two Colosseum runs will be the same. You might have seen similar systems in Roguelikes and Roguelites. At the end of each round, you’ll be given the option to alter your gameplay experience in significant ways – buffing enemies, debuffing yourself, and even altering the terrain for a bigger challenge. The selection of modifiers you have to choose from is randomised, but beware – your choice will persist for the rest of your run. Don’t bite off more than you can chew!
Thankfully, you’ll also be offered another choice at regular intervals – the option to exit the Colosseum with all the loot you’ve accumulated so far. There’s no shame in holding back to fight another day – although the best rewards are reserved for those rare champions who stick it out to the bitter end.
We want to keep the specific details a surprise, but this mechanic is at the heart of the Colosseum experience. We can’t wait to see you battle through the waves and find out what’s waiting at the end!
Glory
Now, not everyone is in it for the heaping piles of gold you can gain in battle. No, some fighters want something even greater… glory!
Within the walls of the Fortis Colosseum, ‘glory’ is more than flowery language. It serves as a measurement of your prowess and comes with tangible benefits.
You’ll earn Glory every time you complete a wave. How much you get depends on how much damage you took, how quickly you cleared the wave, and the number of errors you made – effectively, it’s a reflection of how well you performed.
This isn’t a currency in the traditional sense – you can’t farm it by repeating low-level waves over and over again. It’s based solely on your performance, and the better you perform, the more Glory you’ll accrue.
As you gain more Glory, you’ll gain respect inside and outside of the Colosseum. The regulars will grant you access to untradeable rewards – including a swanky new cape slot upgrade, of course – while ordinary citizens all over Varlamore will recognise you and bestow rewards befitting your station.
Outside of the reward space, Glory also serves as a way to measure yourself against other players. Anyone can beat the Fight Caves and crow about it to their heart’s content, but Glory will let you see which of your friends is really the better fighter. We know that talented PvMers have been competing against each other for time immemorial (or at least since 2013), and this system makes that official. We hope that it will encourage everyone to get stuck in and improve their PvM skills!
That said, there are only so many ticks you can save, hits you can avoid, and enemies you can slay in a single run. To distinguish between the best of the best, we need to go beyond… we need to go… endless mode.
Those of you who can’t get enough of the Colosseum can choose to extend their run by running back every single wave with all the modifiers accumulated so far… plus a few new ones. This is sure to push your Glory to new heights… if you make it out alive.
You earn rewards in two distinct ways. Firstly, after completing a wave you’ll have the chance to earn some unique tradeable rewards which you can choose to cash out the next time you’re offered the opportunity. Additionally, you can also unlock untradeable awards by meeting the requisite Glory threshold.
As always, we’re open to discussion about what rewards might be on offer. We’ve already had a few ideas to get things started…
Glaive of Ralos
For starters, we’re talking about throwing glaives, not those great big spear, polearm thingies (although one of these might prove super cool…)
The Glaive of Ralos is a one-handed, chargeable, thrown weapon in a brand-new weapon category, which bounces back to you after each hit – handy!
Uncharged, you’ll throw it out, hit your enemy for between 0 – 50% of your maximum hit and have the glaive return to your hand. Infinite ammo sounds neat, but only 50% damage? What gives?
When charged this groovy glaive really comes into its own, its sharp edges will slice and dice for two hitsplats. Each splat rolls its own accuracy and damage, where the damage rolls between 0% and 50% of your maximum hit. Not bad, but there’s more!
As fun as the thematics are, we’ve got a cherry on top to make sure that your time spent obtaining one of these bad boys is worthwhile: its special attack. For 50% Energy, successful hits will drain the target’s Defence level by 10% of their Magic level. This means that when charged, you’ll drain either 0%, 10% or 20% of your target’s Magic level from their Defence, depending on whether zero, one or two hits connect. In essence, it’s a little bit like a Ranged Dragon Warhammer, just with a twist. Additionally, your taget’s Defence cannot be reduced by the Glaive of Ralos past 50% of its initial value. Meaning if a target has 200 Defence, the Glaive could shave off 100 at most.
Against targets with high Defence and low Magic levels, the Dragon Warhammer still reigns supreme as your Defence-reduction spec weapon, but against targets with high Defence and high Magic levels, the Glaive of Ralos should prove to be the better option – especially coupled with multiple chances to hit, so it’s a little less ‘all or nothing’ than the Dragon Warhammer. Our hope here is to add a little more variety when it comes to choosing your spec weapon for certain content, move beyond the Dragon Warhammer a little in spots, and perhaps provide a more enjoyable alternative for any of you Irons to grind if you can’t bear to look at another Lizardman Shaman for the time being – though it’s not a complete replacement!
Echo Crystal
Our next unique is something you’ll likely see in the wild a little more often – the Echo Crystal. These resonant rocks give off a nasty shockwave when struck, inflicting recoil damage on your attacker. That’s great, but, uh, how do you equip them?
We’re thinking you’ll be able to slot your Crystals into an existing boot slot item that needs a little extra love. The current frontrunner is the Guardian Boots, although nothing’s set in stone just yet. When charged with the Echo Crystals, the boots will inflict recoil damage on a 3×3 square around the wearer – yowch!
We reckon this effect will again be perfect for wave-based battles, although we think you’ll find it useful in a wide variety of situations – ‘chomp and stomp’ Slayer Tasks, for example.
When the charges run out, you’ll need to pick up another Echo Crystal. They’re tradeable, so you can spend a little GP to grab one on the Grand Exchange, or head back to the Colosseum to refresh your supply.
Sunfire Fanatic Armour
Between the Glaive of Ralos, Echo Crystal, and Sunfire runes (more on those in just a moment), a lot of what’s on offer is a little more involved than simple ‘bigger number’ approaches to rewards. That said, sometimes it’s nice to keep things simple, and we’ve got just the thing!
Sunfire Fanatic Armour is effectively Proselyte armour with bigger numbers. That’s it, the whole pitch!
Seriously though, Proselyte has been the go-to Prayer bonus gear since 2006, and spilling blood to sustain an enigmatic sun god in an ancient Colosseum feels like a fitting spot to earn some gear that brings you a little closer to the divine. Each piece of the tradeable Sunfire Fanatic set requires 60 Prayer and 40 Defence, and will be dropped individually with each piece boasting +2 Prayer bonus over its Proselyte equivalent plus similar defensive bonuses to Rune armour.
Now let’s get back into something a little spicier!
Sunfire Dust
You’ll receive Sunfire Dust in bulk pretty regularly throughout your Colosseum runs. Similar to the Phantom Muspah’s Ancient Essence, Sunfire Dust lets you charge or otherwise interact with various other items, making it a consistent source of profit for anybody taking on the Colosseum challenge.
You already know that you can use Sunfire Dust to charge the Glaive of Ralos, but you’ll also be able to use it to craft Sunfire Runes and charge Dizana’s Quiver. Let’s talk about those in order.
Sunfire Runes
Sunfire Runes are a brand new Rune that take a slightly different approach to the Wrath Rune formula. Assuming you have the requisite Runecraft level (or the funds to pay someone else to do it), you can obtain Sunfire Runes by imbuing regular ol’ Fire Runes with Sunfire Dust at the Fire Altar.
Just like Lava Runes, Sunfire Runes will count as Fire Runes when casting spells – but whenever you consume one, that spell will gain a 10% minimum hit. As a brief note, we anticipate that hovering over a Fire spell with any Sunfire Runes in your inventory would clearly show that you’d be using Sunfire runes as opposed to boring old Fire Runes!
We hope that this boost will breathe new life into the fire spells offered in the Standard Spellbook, especially in conjunction with weapons like the Harmonised Nightmare Staff. Again, we’re thinking that the added damage consistency will help make these underloved options more attractive. Bigger isn’t always better, you know…
Dizana’s Quiver
Would it really be a wave-based minigame without a sick cape up for grabs?
Dizana’s Quiver is our proposal for a new best-in-slot Ranged offering in the Cape/Back slot, after almost 6 years of Ava’s Assembler occupying the top slot.
Now, a best-in-slot item comes with very high expectations – in this case, you’ll need to put on a truly glorious performance in the Colosseum. Make it through every wave, and you should have accumulated enough Glory to take home this untradeable unique reward.
For your trouble, you’ll get +10 Ranged accuracy and +1 Ranged strength over Ava’s Assembler – and let’s face it, it looks much nicer than a rucksack full of magnets and undead animal parts.
So, it looks cooler and it’s a good bit stronger – but come on. We can’t seriously expect you to start picking your own arrows up off the floor. Bring your quiver and your favourite of Ava’s devices along to her workshop, and she’ll apply the same ammo-saving effect to your Cape – that’s 80% pickup rate for an Assembler or 72% for an Accumulator.
On top of all of that, you can charge your quiver using Sunfire Dust to gain an additional +10 Ranged accuracy and +1 Ranged strength. Each time you fire a shot, you’ll lose a little Dust – so make sure to stock up if you want the best bang for your buck.
Some of you may be wondering why this new cape-slot upgrade is aimed at Ranged, not Magic – especially since Mage Arena II and Dragon Slayer II made their way into the game around the same time.
At the end of the day, neither Ava’s Assembler nor the Imbued God Capes are obtained from content suitable for a best-in-slot item. With the addition of Sunfire Runes to add some Magic reward, we felt it appropriate to make the Dizana’s Quiver a Ranged item.
This also lets us stay well clear of talks about Magic powercreep, which is a real and pressing concern – upgrading the God Capes would also make Tumeken’s Shadow more dominant, and we’d want to give such an upgrade very careful consideration before we even thought about putting it in the game. By contrast, it’s about time that someone knocked the Accumulator down a peg – and the Dizana’s Quiver will do that nicely.
Dizana’s Quiver is a pretty exciting reward – so we really want to hear your thoughts on it. Send us your feedback through all the usual channels!
Other Rewards
Unlike the Fight Caves or the Inferno, where all your rewards are tied up in the big fancy Capes you get at the end, the Fortis Colosseum will give you plenty of opportunities to cash out early and make a tidy profit. End-of-wave rewards may contain any of the tradeable uniques, Sunfire Dust, and other familiar items – all of which can be converted to GP.
The aim is to really drive home the risk vs. reward element. Will you take your big pile of loot and gracefully drop out, or risk it all for the chance to wow the crowd and earn more Glory?
At the same time, we want newer players to feel like they can give content like this a go, even if they can’t make it all the way to the final waves. Surviving even a few rounds is more than the average citizen of Civitas illa Fortis can hope for, and making the effort will earn their respect.
In addition to the untradeable uniques, meeting certain Glory thresholds will also unlock utilities all over Varlamore. A Bank chest in a useful location, an Agility shortcut to help you get around, a new Emote, or even a unique quest – it’s all on the table!
We hope this will incentivise lower-level players to give the Colosseum a go and get their first taste of PvM combat. The waves aren’t just a bunch of new enemies to fight – they’re a benchmark for you to measure yourself against every time you enter the minigame. We hope to see players come back every few levels to see how they’ve improved – while picking up some neat rewards in the meanwhile.
If you are entertained, we’d love to hear your feedback on all the regular social channels – especially regarding rewards. We’re really stepping outside our comfort zone this time, and we want to make sure we’re on the right track.
We’ll poll all these rewards in November. This means we’ll have loads of time to gather your feedback and make changes before the poll goes live, so keep an eye out for updates.
In the meanwhile, we hope you’re excited to participate in a grand Varlamorian tradition, and can’t wait to show you what the rest of the region has to offer…
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